Guiding Principles of New Mexico Common Core

The New Mexico Public Education Department’s guiding principles for the Common Core State Standardsare to:

Prepare students with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in education and training after high school.

Ensure students are globally competitive by exposing them to educational standards that are used throughout the world.

Improve equity and economic opportunity for all students by having consistent expectations for achievement for all students.

Clarify so that parents, teachers and students understand what is expected of them.

Collaborate across districts and with other states so that there is sharing of resources and expertise in the development of new classroom materials, curriculum, teacher professional development and student exams based on best practices.

Gayle Densow

In my field of language arts and social sciences, educators need to present 'reading across the curriculum'; e.g., science process skills in science, etc. There are many exemplars of critical and complex text throughout the core curriculum standards. These exemplars give teachers latitude in choosing and presenting foundational text for all learners.
Fact: With the Common Core ELA Standards, English teachers will still teach their students literature as well as literary non-fiction. However, because college and career readiness overwhelming focuses on complex texts outside of literature, these standards also ensure students are being prepared to read, write, and research across the curriculum, including in history and science. These goals can be achieved by ensuring that teachers in other disciplines are also focusing on reading and writing to build knowledge within their subject areas. (http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CoreFacts.pdf).
Fact: The best understanding of what works in the classroom comes from the teachers who are in them. That's why these standards will establish what students need to learn, but they will not dictate how teachers should teach. Instead, schools and teachers will decide how best to help students reach the standards.(http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CoreFacts.pdf).

Penny Coppedge

The Common Core Standards are a powerful tool around which educators can build curriculum in order to ensure equity for students in our state.